Tolkien’s

Christian

Connections

By

Candace Browning

I. Introduction

II. Truth thru Myth

III. Providence

IV. Hope and Faith

V. Pity and Mercy

VI. Similarities to the Bible

A. Various

B. Creation and the Fall

C. Christ

D. The Virgin Mary

VII. Conclusion

I. Introduction

For thousands of years, humanity has turned to the Bible to answer questions of how and why we are here. At the dawn of a new millenium, popular culture has shifted away from ancient stories like those in the Bible. Thankfully, more recent tales influenced by the Gospels have emerged to fulfill this craven desire.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is one such book. It offers a mythological explanation of the apparent chaos, pain, disappointment, horror and violence of the world in terms of the struggle between good and evil. Taking this into consideration, a closer look at the The Lord of the Rings reveals grim and glorious lessons that can be learned.

The works of Tolkien have been almost universally embraced by literate Christians who have long recognized the richness and beauty of Tolkien’s Middle-earth as well as the profound influence of his Christian faith upon the shape of his imaginary world. On the other hand, it may be read and enjoyed without reference to any theology whatsoever. It succeeds mainly as an exciting tale, but a full appreciation of Tolkien’s accomplishment requires some sense of what lies behind the book.

It is one thing to find a connection between Tolkien’s tales and some other story based on inference and perceived pattern, and it is another thing entirely for the author to make a concrete connection between stories. Similarity is totally different than equivalence.

“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously at first, but consciously so in the revision. That is why I have no put in, or have cut out, practically all references to ‘religion,’ to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”

By design The Lord of the Rings is not a Christian allegory, but rather an invented myth comparable to Christian and Catholic truths.

An initial glance at Lord of the Rings indicates that the world of Middle-earth is polytheistic if not atheistic. To begin with, Tolkien was intending to create a pantheon of deities similar to that of the Norse gods, but eventually became uncomfortable with a created belief system that was so opposite to his own. Thus, he created a Judeo-Christian deity in The Silmarillion and associated works.

Ethics and morality are also attuned to the Judeo-Christian belief system, in a manner sufficiently subtle that the reader does not often notice what is being show to them. Among these themes are temptation, sin, potential repentance and resulting punishment for and often because of the fall involved.

Many highbrow critics charge that the masses are drawn to Tolkient because he is an escapist writer. His work, they say, enables readers to flee from the horrors of modern life, to find refuge in a mythical and unreal world. These critics are right to describe our age as unspeakably terrible. More people were killed by violent means in the twentieth century than in all of the previous centuries combined.

Yet it is exactly this world of unprecedented evil - of extermination ovens and concentration camps, of terrorists attacks and ethnic cleansings, of epidemic disease and mass starvation and deadly material self-indulgence - that the The Lord of the Rings addresses. Far from encouraging us to turn away from such evils, Tolkien’s book forces us to confront them.

The Lord of the Rings is a massive epic fantasy of more than half a million words. It is a hugely complex work, having its own complicated chronology, cosmogony, geography, nomenclature, and multiple languages - including two forms of Elvish, Quenya and Sindarin. The plot is so grand that it casts backward to the formation of the first things, while also glancing forward to the end of time.

The religious significance of LOTR thus arises out of its plot and characters, its images and tone, its landscape and point of view - not from heavy-handed moralizing or preachifying.

Tolkien creates a mythical pre-Christian world were there is not a yet a Chosen People, where Abraham and Isaac and Jacob have not yet lived, where Moses has not yet led Israel out of bondage, where the Hebrew prophets have spoken the word of the Lord, where God has not yet become incarnate in Jesus Christ. Yet for all this, Tolkien’s book is pre-Christian only in chronology, not in content. The Gospel resounds in its depths.

This is not to call Tolkien’s work a Christian allegory. Tolkien confessed his “cordial dislike” of one-to-one correspondences. To make one thing equal to another is for the author to coerce the reader, leaving no room for the free play of the imagination.

In the fantasy books of his friend C.S. Lewis, allegory plays a much larger role. If in reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, for example, we fail to see that Aslan is a Christ figure, we have missed the real point of the book. This is nowhere the case with Tolkien. He much prefers fantasy to allegory because it enables “varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers.” He wants us to discern likenesses and resemblances between the Ruling Ring and the nuclear bomb, for instance, but not to equate them. So does Mordor remind us of the death camps and the gulag and the forced re-education farms, but its grimness would be no less deadly to readers who knew nothing of the German and Soviet and Chinese atrocities.

II. Truth thru Myth

Tolkien presents a world ruled by a single God who is just, yet merciful, possessing an infinite love for beings he has created. Tolkien, himself, could not create from nothing. Only God can do that. He was, however, able to sub-create an entire world using his imagination , his beliefs, and his experiences.

Tolkien said, “[M]yths are not lies. Far from being lies, they were the best way - sometimes the only way - of conveying truths that would otherwise remain inexpressible.” We have come from God, Tolkien argued, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is God. Myths may be misguided, but they steer, however shakily, toward the true harbor.

The true “myth” of Christ is a manifestation of God expressing Himself through Himself, with Himself and in Himself. Whereas pagan myths are manifestations of God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using the images to reveal fragments of His eternal truth. God revealed Himself as the ultimate poet who was creating reality in His own image.

Tolkien was wise enough to know that if the religious element in his myth was too explicit, the allegory would have overwhelmed the story, and so he hid he fact that there were Christian elements. There are millions of readers who have experienced Tolkien without sharing his faith and been rewarded with his story. The “fairy” story must succeed as just a tale achieving literary belief.

Tolkien spend a lifetime sub-creating a Middle-earth that contains physical entities representing all that is good and bad in our Earthly journeys. There are Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, Wizards, Ents, Trolls, Wraiths, Urukhais and at least one Balrog - all with their own languages, cultures, history and myths - to mix it up with humans in a grand epic battle between good and evil.

But a battle against evil alone does not make The Lord of the Rings fundamentally Christian and Catholic; and yet there are many ways that it is.

Evil is parasitic and can only destroy that which was created. Everything that Iluvatar (God) created in Middle-earth (and in our world) is good. It is the perversion and corruption of what was created that is evil. God can exist on its own. Evil can only live off what is good.

The protagonists pursue absolutes, rejecting any willingness to compromise or relativise. In Middle-earth there is an absoluteness of what is right and wrong. There is no hint of moral relativism that separates different peoples, races, or creators of the free lands. Aragorn says to Eomer: “Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among men.”

Tolkien insisted that all fantasy creations must have the mythical character of the supernatural world as well as the historical consistency of the natural world. The question to be posed for fantasy as also for many of the biblical narratives is not, therefore, “Did these things literally happen?” but “Does their happening reveal the truth?”

The first part of The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954, with the other two parts following the next year. While Tolkien’s publisher liked the novel, he feared it would be a flop. It didn’t quite turn out that way. Initially, the novel sold respectably. Then, as its reputation spread to American college campuses, it zoomed past commercial success to become a cultural phenomenon.

This response to Tolkien’s work, which has progressed from bumper stickers declaring “Frodo Lives” to thousands of websites and discussion groups, attests to our need for certain kinds of narratives and stories – a need that is rarely met. The word that best describes these stories is “myth.” Stories that help us make sense of our lives and the world around us. They provide an account for good and evil, and they define vice and virtue.

As an avid student of Celtic and Nordic myths, Tolkien understood the role these myths played both in the lives of individuals and of the larger society. The myths not only entertained, they transmitted people’s values and beliefs. In this sense, “myth” means the opposite of what we usually understand it to be. Instead of being something untrue, its what we hold to be most profoundly true.

But what put The Lord of the Rings in a class by itself

III. Providence

The power of Tolkien lies in the way that he succeeds, through myth, in making the unseen hand of Providence felt by the reader. Tolkien’s universe is ruled by God. The powers of fate, luck and fortune are inconstant. God reserves the right to intrude in the story and produce realities that would otherwise have been impossible.

The name of God may not be spoken in The Lord of the Rings, but his will is evident from the outset. When Gandalf explains to Frodo the significance of the Ring being discovered by his Uncle Bilbo. Seemingly a chance occurrence, Gandalf says instead, “there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not its maker. In which case you were also meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.” Gandalf can “put it no plainer,” of course, because in this story Tolkien wishes to avoid explicit entanglement with religious doctrine. Nevertheless, the underlying idea is clear.

Nowhere is the hand of Providence more evident than in the climatic scene at Mount Doom where good is ultimately served. Tolkien himself wrote, “[t]he inventiveness of [God] will make good of what otherwise would not be obtained. He thought that a story containing a eucatastrophe, a word he invented denoting “a sudden joyous turn,” was a story at its highest function.

In the New Testament, Christ is the supreme example in history of divine providence. At a particular and forever hallowed point in time, at a specific spot on this tiny globe we call home, the Story of stories comes to life. There in Bethlehem, a door opens in the walls of the world, the veil of eternity is drawn aside, and the desire of all nations - Jesus Christ, God in the flesh - steps into our midst. Christ lives and because He lives, the enemy’s defeat is certain.

The Lord of the Rings is really a spiritual quest. The heroes must find for themselves the reasons which are worth sacrificing and dying for. They must hold fast to those reasons through all manner of adversity and temptation. To succeed, they must find an inner strength to accomplish feats beyond anything they could have previously imagined. Their choices require a leap of faith.

In this sense The Lord of the Rings is a call to action. It most resembles the Gospels in its non-allegorical emphasis on the choices of individuals. When the time is right, Jesus knew that he had to do something unprecedented. He had to show the world something even more precious than life as we know it: the unfathomable will of God.

Christ’s task was to become the sign that men could trust the mysterious purposes of the universe, which often appear hostile and indifferent to our survival. The heroes in Tolkien’s quest learn in a proleptically Christian way, what every mortal must confront: that we no sooner find our lives than we have to give them up.

Frodo remains faithful to his calling. In doing so, he does more than save his beloved Shire from ruin. Frodo learns - and thus teaches - what for Tolkien is the deepest of all Christian truths: how to surrender one’s life, how to lose one’s treasure, how to die and thus how to truly live. When God asks us to transcend our present state of being, he is asking us to break and spend ourselves as relentlessly as Frodo gives his entire being to the quest.

Tolkien’s conclusion - Frodo’s failure at Mount Doom; the scouring of the Shire, the departure of the Elves - avoids the device of a climatic tragedy or a heroic death. All survive the conflict except for Gollum, who was consumed by the evil of his own choosing, and Sauron, who is allowed to perish because he is the embodiment of evil.

Like all Christians, Frodo is called to risk his life through great peril to save others. Frodo, like us, does not appear to be up to the task. He does not have any obvious talent suited for war, but he is chosen as we are. We are all necessary for God’s grand plan to be fulfilled; and even the most unlikely and disgusting Gollum-like beast in our life is necessary. And when Frodo asks, “What can a little hobbit do?” - Isaiah answers, “A little child will lead them.”

IV. Hope and Faith

That Tolkien avoided a climatic sacrificial death in The Lord of the Rings is not due to some failure on his part to appreciate the dramatic merits of such a device, but because in the ending he was doing something different. Some victories come only at the cost of some final sacrifice, but this, Tolkien believed, is not the deepest truth about the conflict of good and evil. “Samples or glimpses of a final victory” can only be offered by legends.

Christian hope concerns precisely a radical change that breaks the cycle of the world’s endless turning. Such a hope is not a general optimism about the nature of things, nor a forward-looking confidence that all will eventually be well. Instead, it is the hope in a future that God alone can and will provide. Tolkien knows that only the coming of the Kingdom will bring true victory and that “history is one long defeat.”

Sam wonders aloud, “Is everything sad going to come true?” The answer is yes, but there is still work to be done, future shadows to be fought. Yet the element of hope remains.

The Lord of the Rings addresses the greatest struggle of this century and beyond - good versus evil. A shining example of Tolkien’s outlook is when Sam beholds a single star shimmering above the dark clouds of Mordor. He writes that “[t]he beauty of it smote his heart, as looked up out of that forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small passing thing: there was light and beauty forever beyond its reach.”

Sam discerns that light and shadow are not locked in uncertain combat. However much the night seems to triumph, it is the gleaming star which penetrates and defines the darkness.

V. Pity and Mercy

Despite its pagan setting The Lord of the Rings is an enduring Christian classic because of its unrestrained quality of mercy. Gandalf says, “[m]any that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the wise cannot see all ends.” His willingness to forgive trespasses and to wait on slow-working providence announces the nature of Christian mercy.

Gollum is not to be executed precisely because he is a fellow sinner. Gandalf admits that there is not much hope for Gollum’s salvation, but neither is there much hope for many others, perhaps not even for most. To deny such hope to them, is to deny it to oneself.

Gandalf’s declaration that “the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many” is true. The same vile Gollum who commits Cain’s sin, but was spared by Bilbo enables the Ring’s destruction. The salvation of the world is achieved by his previous pity and forgiveness of injury.

Most commonly cited as Christian is the role of forgiveness in The Lord of the Rings: the rewards brought by showing charity and pity to an enemy. The most outstanding case is that of Gollum. He fits the usual dismal pattern by repaying mercy with ultimate treachery. The fact of sparing him allows Frodo, however fortuitously, and by whatever trick of chance or Iluvatar to succeed in his quest. Those who look for a Christian message in this need only a quote from Tolkien himself: that the end of the quest of the ring bearer “exemplifies” the words of the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. Lead us not unto temptation but deliver us from evil.

VI. Biblical Parallels

A. Various

Numerous parallels can be found to the Gospels in The Lord of the Rings. The Shire is presented as an almost Eden-like land of gardens. This could be a metaphor for the innocence and purity of life, threatened by evil. Rivendell and Lothlorien also function to some degree as comparisons to Paradise. It has been suggested that Tom Bombadil is an unfallen being - like an Adam that never fell. He was also the first to give all things their suiting names like Adam. The longing of the Elves for Valinor can be compared to the longing of the Jewish people for Zion.

Tokien expressly says that the Numenorians of Gondor are very similar to Egyptians in their love of power and to construct the gigantic and massive as well as their great interest in ancestry and tombs. Galadriel bestows up the Fellowship seven mystical gifts which are analogous to the seven sacraments. A comparison can also be seen in the provision of lembas to the Last Supper. Before the Fellowship departs from Lothlorien, they have a final supper where the mystical Elvish bread is shared, and they all drink from a common cup. A close examination of the appendices of The Lord of the Rings reveals that the Fellowship begin their mission on December 25 (Christmas) and their story climaxes on March 25 (traditionally the date of the Crucifixion). The temptation of the serpent is reflected in the temptation of the Ring. Gollum commits Cain’s sin in acquiring the Ring by murdering Deagol.

Gollum, Saruman, and Bormir reflect aspects of Judas. Gollum serves Frodo until the bitter end much as Judas remains in Jesus’ company. Saruman like Judas is impatient with the slow way goodness works. Boromir breaks the Fellowship like Judas did with the disciples.

The exile of the Elves corresponds to the Fall of Man. Indeed, Tolkien said in a letter “there cannot be any ‘story’ without a fall.”

Dwarves, in some aspects, reminded Tolkien of Jews.

In the Shire, the Hobbits come naturally to living a beatific life that Christ calls Christians to live by. The Hobbits are the meek that will inherit the earth, the merciful who will receive mercy, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers.

There are sacraments not symbols. For their journey, Galadriel graciously bestows upon the Fellowship - a representation of the church -seven mystical gifts; no mere symbols are these, but glimmering reflections of the Church’s seven sacraments - the conveying of spiritual grace through temporal rites.

Gandalf, the steward of all things good in the world, reflects the papacy. Gandalf is leader of the free and faithful. He is steward of all things good in the world, but he claims rule over no land. As the Popes over history did with kings and emperors did with kings and emperors of our world, so Gandalf crowns the king and blesses him to rule with justice and peace.

Tolkien also appears to be a staunch beliver in the words of Christ: “You must be like a little child…” Relatively immune to the malevolent powers of the Ring are the Hobbits, with their simple pleasures, short-term life plans and relatively humble ambitions. Compare that to the Men of Middle-earth, who often desire political power are more strongly tempted and thus succumb depending on their individual personas. Gandalf, and angelic Istar, is both immensely tempted by the Ring’s power and intelligent enough to know what the consequences would be even if he used it for good. With the exception of the Elves, the Ring’s influence seems to be stronger with heightened ambition and the pride that comes with it.

Perhaps the strongest example is also in The Silmarillion. In a manner comparable to Lucifer, such beings as Morgoth and Sauron were corrupted into demonic beings. It illustrates the them: “Pride goes before the fall.”

A more clear example is Boromir. His pride and intentions lead him to attempt a theft of the Ring. The ripple effects of his action, Frodo’s subsequent flight and the searching for the other Hobbits, result in Boromir’s death, though Tolkien used the event to illustrate true pentinance and reparation.

B. Creation and the Fall

The tales of Tolkien recount a prebiblical period of history - a time when there were no Chosen people, no incarnation, no religion at all - from a point of view that is distinctly Christian. In particular, The Simarillion relates the larger mythical context of Middle-earth, beginning with a magnificent allegorical retelling of the Creation and the Fall.

Eru, Middle-earth’s image of God creates the Ainur. These beings are close to Christianity’s conception of angels. The hierarchy between angels and archangels compare favorably to Tolkien’s two classes of Ainur: the Maiar, or lesser “angels” and the Valar, or “archangels.”

Eru called together all the Ainur and declared to them a mighty them, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful than he had yet revealed. The glory of its beginning and the splendor of its end amazed the Ainur so that they bowed before Iluvatar (God) and were silent.

After leading this heavenly choir through the Music of Creation, Eru showed the Ainur a vision of the world that their music would create. He then actualized this vision and brought Arda into being by uttering the prophetic word Ea (Elvish for “Let it be.”

Tolkien tells us that it was a single Ainur who introduced discord into the Music of Creation. Melkor, the mightiest, instituted a competing vision into the music. It is this discord that is the origin of evil in Middle-earth. He did not turn to darkness because he loved it, but rather because he loved the light so much he could not cope with the fact that he could not have it all to himself.

One way to understand Melkor’s transformation to Morgoth is to compare it to Lucifer’s transformation into Satan. Lucifer’s love for God turned into rivalry and eventually hatred. This led him to the deluded belief that he could actually contend with and ultimately replace God.

The first is represented by Tolkien’s supreme being, Iluvatar, who is in personality very much akin to a Christian God. He is assumed to be male and ever-loving, exists outside of space and time, and has the peculiar mixture of existential characteristics of the Christian Jehovah. The Christian nature of this deity is reinforced by his creation of a retinue of heavenly choiristers to serve him in his design, the Ainur. One of these, Melko or Morgoth, comes to lead a rebellion against his creator’s authority and to take up residence in the material world as his particular sphere of action, in which he embodies pure evil. This is a clear parallel to the fall of angels led by Satan.

C. Christ

The passion of the Christ is echoed in the struggles of Tolkien’s three heroes Frodo, Gandalf and Aragorn. Each embody one of the three aspects of Christ’s ministry as priest, prophet and king. The priestly role belongs to Frodo who bears a burden of terrible evil on behalf of the whole world like Christ carrying his cross. Frodo’s stumbling approach to Mordor is like the faltering steps of Christ as he repeatedly falls on the path to Golgotha. Gandalf is the prophet, revealing hidden knowledge, working wonders, and teaching others the way. Finally Aragorn, is the crownless destined to be king. He lives only to serve even though he is spurned and shunned out of fear by those he serves. Aragorn is an anointed king who brings healing traveling through the land.

All three heroes also undergo different forms of death and resurrection. As Christ descended into the grave, Frodo journeys into Mordor, Land of Death, and there suffers a death-like state in the lair of the giant spider Shelob before awakening to complete his task. And as Christ ascended into heaven, Frodo’s life in Middle-earth comes to an end when he departs over the sea into the mythical West with the Elves, which is to say Paradise. Evoking the saving death and resurrection of Christ, Gandalf does battle with the powers of hell to save his friends, sacrificing himself and descending into the nether regions before being triumphantly reborn in greater power and glory. Aragorn reflects the saving work of Christ by walking the Paths of the Dead and offering peace to the spirits imprisoned there.

Tolkien said in a letter, “Thus Gandalf faced and suffered death, and came back or was sent back, as he says, with enhanced power. But though one may be reminded in this of the Gospels, it is not really the same thing at all. The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would dare to write. Here I am only concerned with Death as part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without guarantees.

There is a longing for the return of the king. As Christians long for the return of Christ the King, so the free people of Middle-earth long for their kingdoms to be once more united in peace and justice under their rightful heir.

D. The Virgin Mary

Although the Marian elements are less obvious, they are still there and without them the story of Frodo’s quest makes less sense. Tolkien was an ardent Catholic and held a life-long veneration of the Blessed Virgin, Mary. Poignant imitations of her are seen in Galadriel and Elbereth.

Galadriel, the Elven queen of Lothlorien, is the immortal queen of a paradisiacal realm. In depicting her beauty and majesty as well as the devotion of others to her Tolkien could hardly help drawing on the actual devotion in his religious tradition to a glorified queen of a divine realm. Tolkien himself says, “I think it is true that I owe much of this character to the Catholic and Christian teaching and imagination about Mary.” However, Galadriel’s background contains a fall from grace which her later encounter with Frodo constitutes the last stage of reparation,

Elbereth, a member of the Valar is on the other hand a feminine character that genuinely reflects Mary. The Elves sing of her. The light of her stars, captured in Galadriel’s phial, illuminates the worst parts of Frodo’s quest. Gildor cries out “May Elbereth protect you!” when Frodo is being pursued by the Black Riders. When some of these riders attack on Weathertop, Frodo is saved from death by calling out Elbereth’s name. In the lair of Shelob the spider, when the fate of the quest rests in Sam’s hands, he cries out to Elbereth in an Elvish tongue he does not even know and is given the ability to overcome.

For Tolkien, the story was certainly the most important thing. He would never have picked a Catholic figure like Jesus and gratuitously put him in his story. In one of his letters he said that he did not consider himself a good enough theologian to have written any kind of theological treatise. For Tolkien, the story was paramount.

Lady Galadriel, the Elven queen, also refuses the Ring. It would make her enormous beauty mesmerizing. Those who freely admired her would have no choice but to worship her. Perhaps, alone among modern writers, Tolkien understood that evils subtlest semblance is not with the ugly but with the gorgeous. “I shall not be dark,” Galadriel warns, “but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair.”

E. Gospel = LOTR

Tolkien links his word eucatastrophe with the word evangelium: the one is a good catastrophe and the other is the Good News. Like C.S. Lewis, Tolkien regards many of the world’s myths and fairie-stories as forerunners and preparations of the Gospel - as fallible human attempts to tell the Story that only the triune God can tell perfectly. The Gospel is the ultimate fairy-story, Tolkien concludes because it contains “the greatest and most conceivable eucatastrophe…There is no tale ever told that men would rather find as true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits…To reject it leads either to sadness or wrath.

VII. Conclusion

The Lord of the Rings speaks directly to some of the most fundamental concerns in this world: the nature of evil, the lure of power, and the duty of courage. Tolkien wields diverse sources to reveal truths, beauties, and terrors that reach through our own perceptions and to confirm to us some shared sense of good and the value in our deeds upon this temporal Earth.

Tolkien’s sublety is that he lays a trail of clues for his readers. Beloved by the churched and unchurched, The Lord of the Rings has the power to be evangelical if the reader scratches beneath the surface. There is no direct mention of religion in Middle-earth, yet Tolkien considered the book a reflection of his own faith. Tom Shippey, Tolkien’s finest interpreter, calls it “a kind of signature, a personal mark of piety.”

The tales that do not matter concern there-and-back-again adventures - escapades undertaken because we are bored and seek exciting entertainment. The tales that rivet the mind, on the other hand, involve a quest that we do not choose for ourselves. Instead, we find ourselves embarked upon a journey quite apart from our choosing.

The Lord of the Rings is the work of a profoundly Christian man. It does not contradict Christianity, but rather complements it.

However, Tolkien was not one to insert divine figures into his works, but he was altogether willing to pour morality into the story. That is where we see the distinction between the evils of selfishness, avarice, spite, untruthfulness, and malice drawn up against sacrificial love, honor, self-control, veracity and loyalty. And the story needed to point out with clarity the more beautiful and enduring set of qualities.

Russians in the atheistic Soviet Union woke up to the spiritual implications of the novel long before many Westerners. Many read it in Samizdat form. This was a system whereby one person would come into possession of a forbidden or suspect book, copy it by hand or typewriter, and then circulate the copies to others who would distribute it further.

Pinned as a fairy-story, Tolkien’s work was faulted by Western critics, and they dismissed it as “unrealistic” and “escapist.”

There are in fact no fairies in Tolkien’s work. It has Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits, but they are not pretty, tinselly or quaint as in the works of Walt Disney. Each group is portrayed in detail, with its own well-defined language, psychology and culture. They are more realistic, in fact, than many people allegedly from “real life” portrayed in modern fiction and films.